Background Briefing: January 12, 2025
Instead of Helping Angelenos Who Lost Their Homes, Trump Offers Insults
We begin with disasters engulfing Los Angeles as wildfires continue to rage many residents near the fire zones still lack electricity as well as drinkable water. Meanwhile politicians play the blame game as America’s new leader Trump, offers nothing but insults for California and its governor even though we subsidize most of the Red States that voted for the president-elect. We discuss why, after so many wildfires, local officials seem unprepared and what can be done to prepare for worsening conditions as global warming will only get more dire under the new Trump Administration. Joining us is LeRoy Westerling, Chair of the University of California Disaster Resilience Network and Professor of the management of complex systems at the University of California Merced where he studies the relationship between climate and wildfires.
The Third Inauguration of Venezuela’s Maduro Who Lost the Last Election in a Landslide
Then we look into the third inauguration of Venezuela’s illegitimate President Maduro who lost the last election in a landslide against him but with the help of Russia, China, Iran and Turkey, will stay in power and wait out the opposition as his country continues to fail and its people suffer or leave. Joining us is David Smilde, a Professor of Human Relations and the Chair of the Department of Sociology at Tulane University. He has researched Venezuela for over 30 years, living there most of that time, and he is the co-author of the new book, The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime and Policing during Chavismo.
The Scofflaw-in-Chief is Now the Felon-in-Chief
Then finally we assess the damage done to the scofflaw-in-chief who is now the felon-in-chief after Trump’s desperate ploy to have the Supreme Court intervene failed to stop his sentencing on 34 counts in the hush money case where he paid off a porn star to avoid another sex scandal which would have sunk his chances of being elected in 2016. Joining us to discuss the disconnect between the obviously “crazy” Trump and the “crazy like a fox” Trump who has been one step ahead of the sheriff all his life, is James Zirin, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and the host of the critically acclaimed television talk show, Conversations with Jim Zirin, which airs on PBS. He is the author of Supremely Partisan: How Raw Politics Tips the Scales in the United States Supreme Court and Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits. A contributing editor at The Washington Monthly, he is a regular contributor to The Hill where his latest article is “No one is above the law — except Trump.”